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Telmo Rodriguez is not a physically imposing figure, but the diminutive Spanish wine grower has to be on any short list of the biggest names in wine.

Born in Rioja, he’s travelled Spain from one end to the other and back, and has made as many as 20 different wines both in and outside of Spain’s traditional Denominaciones de Origen (or DOs), all in search of his quest for “authenticity over the spectacular.” For Rodriguez, the future is always more important than the present, and not surprisingly for Rodriguez it must be shaped by the past.

During a recent visit to Vancouver, our meeting covered a number of wide-ranging topics, including his much-heralded return to the family property at Remelluri in the Rioja Alavesa. Telmo’s father purchased Remelluri in 1967, although its origins date back to the 14th century, when monks from the Tolono monastery founded a sanctuary and a farm on the same site.

As a young man, Telmo was given the chance to make a white wine by his father (likely to keep him busy), while the real business of Rioja red wine was being conducted by others. As it turns out, Telmo’s idea of making a blanco by blending nine or 10 white grapes and focusing only on the site, and not on the grapes, would jump-start his career for the years to come.

Telmo left Remelluri saying he never felt the wines the way he felt the vineyards. He was determined to make wine that would represent its origin — the vineyard and the vines, and not the grapes or the winemaker. In the intervening years, he has proven to anyone who will listen (and taste) that the best wines of Spain do not have to reside in a legislated DO or appellation. Spain has ancient vineyards, some more than 1,000 years old, and Rodriguez takes his cues from those sites making small, exciting, authentic wines that in his own words are “miracles.”

After more than a decade of success with his wine company Compañia de Vinos Telmo Rodriguez, Telmo has returned to Remelluri where he will help run the family business with his sister, Amaia. Both are devoted to the vineyard and the property known around the region as Granja Nuestra Señora de Remelluri. The old vineyard is flourishing, having gone organic in 2010, and is now well on its way to becoming a certified biodynamic site.

Rodriguez worships Spain’s natural bush vines and will not tolerate any vine that is “stretched out in the sun to bake on trellises.” He believes Spain’s ancient culture of the bush vine is the secret to the country’s best wines because the tent-like shape of the vines create a unique atmosphere that allows the grapes to thrive and withstand the rigours of heat and wind.

As Rodriguez and his sister slowly transform Remelluri back to its original footings and landscape, they are also separating any fruit that, while grown contiguous to the property, is not part of the original estate. The new project, called Las Lindes de Remelluri, uses grapes provided by growers who used to sell to Remelluri to make wines from the villages of San Vicente de la Sonsierra and Labastida. It is delicious stuff, vineyard and village-based, that respects the families who grow the grapes. It’s a blueprint by which Rodriguez lives his life and it looks good on him and all of Spain.

Clearly, Telmo is most excited about his work in Rioja, where he has been recognized for bringing a new style to the region — which is, of course, an old style. Rodriguez has been able to sway the critics by eschewing monster red wines for those with more finesse and a better story to tell. It is no mean feat in the face of big, oaky, monster (alcoholic) reds that have dominated U.S. market ratings for so long.

As Rodriguez points out, none of his projects are larger than 20 hectares because that is about the limit of vineyards any one family can manage. He doesn’t go to a village to create a brand. His projects, as he calls them, have to be human, to fit the people and the site and the history of the land.

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